Fran
Taylor’s story and today’s WSJ article on Captain Nicholas Ayers (no link, subscribers only) shows clearly the humanity of the individuals who will decide not to shoot when told “he has a son” (kidnapper) or treat a man with greater respect because he lost a son (Ayers).
The people who order bombings of apartment buildings to “dry up the sea in which terrorists swim,” however, show no soul. This imbalance is killing off our friendships in Iraq as it leaves fewer and fewer families who have not been directly attacked by occupation bombs, bullets, and arrests. I admire Ayers. Too bad he has to fight all the generals and chickenhawks who don’t seem to know what it means to love your family.

Posted by: Citizen | Sep 22 2004 16:06 utc | 3

Citizen, I am not familiar with Ayers, who is he? Could you post some extracts from that WSJ article?
Then there is Juan Cole at it again;
If America were Iraq, What would it be Like?

Posted by: Fran | Sep 22 2004 20:14 utc | 5

Ayers is a 29 year old captain in the Army just returned from a year in Iraq, and has just been appointed to teach at West Point. The WSJ article is from today, “On Ground in Iraq, Capt. Ayers Writes His Own Playbook.”
A few quotes:
“Last week, after 12 months in Iraq, Capt. Ayers returned to his home in Kansas. He’s prepared a tome full of advice for his replacement. In the book are histories of the local sheiks and tribes, their grudges and fleeting alliances. There is a section on funeral etiquette.
“He also wrote a section on the sheik who helped him get the machine gun back. A few days after the incident, insurgents, angry that he had aided the Americans, murdered the sheik’s son. ‘I thought if he had enough influence to get the stuff back, he also had enough influence’ to protect his families, Capt. Ayers now says, ‘I was wrong.’ Capt. Ayers says he advised his replacement to handle the sheik with deference.”
— This is the work, worth more than all the experts stateside, that builds actual alliances. But Ayers is the strongest link in the chain, not the whole chain. The Japanese occupiers of China in the 1930s were also excellent at occupying expertly, but in the end their greatest success was to separate and brand the wheat and the chaff among China’s patriots.
“Before deploying to Iraq, he and his soldiers fought a giant mock tank battle at the National Training Center. It wasn’t helpful.
“Instead, he says, ‘I guess I’d drop soldiers in a foreign high school and give them two days to figure out all teh cliques. Who are the cool kids? Who are the geeks? he says. That would be pretty close to what he has been doing in Iraq, he says, with one big exception: There would also have to be people inside the high school trying to kill the soldiers.”
Where did Ayers get his smarts? Kosovo.

Posted by: Citizen | Sep 22 2004 21:18 utc | 7

extremely dark story in vanity fair ‘path to florida’ – it’s become very bolshie with mr carter
long well considered articles
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 22 2004 23:26 utc | 9

OT – nothing to do with the war, but very curious!!!
God truly is angry

Posted by: Fran | Sep 23 2004 5:22 utc | 11

For friends of Thucydides (and others) Barbara Garson has an nice OpEd in the LA Times.

… Another argument for the war was that it would pay for itself. A committee of Sicilian exiles and Athenian experts told the Assembly that there was enough wealth in Sicily to pay the costs of the war and occupation. “The report was encouraging but untrue,” wrote Thucydides. …

Posted by: b | Sep 23 2004 10:40 utc | 13

That was a great article about the Sicilian expedition.
Now, if you want even more, here are some choice quotes:
Nikias advising against the invasion:
“It would be disgraceful to have to retire under compulsion, or to send back for reinforcements, owing to want of reflection at first: we must therefore start from home with a competent force, seeing that we are going to sail far from our country, and upon an expedition not like any which you may undertaken undertaken the quality of allies, among your subject states here in Hellas, where any additional supplies needed were easily drawn from the friendly territory; but we are cutting ourselves off, and^going to a land entirely strange, from which during four months in winter it is not even easy for a messenger get to Athens.”
And the Athenians react:
“The Athenians, however, far from having their taste for the voyage taken away by the burdensomeness of the preparations, became more eager for it than ever; and just the contrary took place of what Nicias had thought, as it was held that he had given good advice, and that the expedition would be the safest in the world. All alike fell in love with the enterprise. The older men thought that they would either subdue the places against which they were to sail, or at all events, with so large a force, meet with no disaster; those in the prime of life felt a longing for foreign sights and spectacles, and had no doubt that they should come safe home again; while the idea of the common people and the soldiery was to earn wages at the moment, and make conquests that would supply a never-ending fund of pay for the future. With this enthusiasm of the majority, the few that liked it not, feared to appear unpatriotic by holding up their hands againstit, and so kept quiet.”
There are also bits about the great enthusiasm for the war, with everyone in Athens being now a self-proclaimed expert, everyone suddenly showing some kind of interest and making maps of Sicily and how the war operations will go there (though I haven’t found them so far; they may be in Plutarch rather than Thucydides).
As is known, the whole enterprise fell apart and Athens lost something like 20.000+ men. So, the Athenian people finally admits the quite bad news:
“When the conviction was forced upon them, they were angry with the orators who had joined in promoting the expedition, just as if they had not themselves voted it, and were enraged also with the reciters of oracles and soothsayers, and all other omen-mongers of the time who had encouraged them to hope that they should conquer Sicily.”
The rest of Greece’s reaction is also telling:
“The winter ensuing saw all Hellas stirring under the impression of the great Athenian disaster in Sicily. Neutrals now felt that even if uninvited they ought no longer to stand aloof from the war, but should volunteer to march against the Athenians, who, as they severally reflected, would probably have come against them if the Sicilian campaign had succeeded.“
(emphasis mine, for obvious reason)
“But above all, the subjects of the Athenians showed a readiness to revolt even beyond their ability, judging the circumstances with passion, and refusing even to hear of the Athenians being able to last out the coming summer.”
Thucydides didn’t write the end of the story, but Xenopho has, and here is the conclusion of the war, here is the overall reaction when Athens had been defeated and turned into a puppet of Sparta, deprived of navy and of fortifications:
“And so they fell to levelling the fortifications and walls with much enthusiasm, to the accompaniment of female flute-players, deeming that day the beginning of liberty to Greece.”

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Sep 23 2004 20:28 utc | 15

Discussing Russias way to new stability this OpEd piece in todays Washington Post reflects my optimistic vision: Not Another Soviet Union

Russia is joining the ranks of nascent dictatorships, and Vladimir Putin is the executioner of Russian democracy. Right? Wrong. Russia is not a dictatorship, and the political system Putin is trying to reshape is not a democracy. In its transition from the Soviet Union, it never got there. More important, before we lament the passing of Russian democracy and put the blame for its demise on Putin, let us consider our own record of dealing with Russia since the Soviet breakup and how the Russians themselves might see that record.

Posted by: b | Sep 24 2004 7:41 utc | 17

Raed in the Middle in Iraq points to a video of a bomb killing some 30 persons walking openly in the streets of Fallujah.
He is not amused…

Posted by: b | Sep 24 2004 10:52 utc | 19

The fallujah video has been linked at prisonplanet since July and I’m sure I’ve posted it here or at the annex at least once. If images like that would get wide circulation, it will influence public opinion in the US.

Posted by: b real | Sep 24 2004 14:56 utc | 21

Waaahooo to you Koreyel for the pointy tail comment. Perhaps it is more accurate than you think.

Posted by: rapt | Sep 24 2004 15:37 utc | 23

while we’re sticking it to Rumsfeld…
There was a reuters article yesterday titled Rumsfeld Sold Stakes in Pentagon Contractors that regenerated my interest in a thread I’ve been only intermittently trying to trace out re his possible motives for 911. Rummie derived a lot of his wealth before joining the current admin from ABB & Gilead Sciences and little things like selling nuclear reactors to North Korea. One of his oldest friendships is reportedly w/ Frank Carlucci, with whom he roomed at one point in college. Obviously Rummie is into schemes to increase his personal wealth, of which he’s amassed possibly more than $135 mill.
In Sept of 2001 the opposition from the military establishment that Rumsfeld faced wrt his “transformation” plans had pretty much stopped him in his tracks. Rummie wanted more missle defense, high-tech equip, and outsourcing to streamline the military, but he failed to win support. 11 Sept changed everything. The Quadrennial Defense Review Report that had been scheduled for release at the end of the month was essentially scrapped and Rumsfeld told the team working on it to start again and “think outside the box.” Instead of naming China as the main enemy of the US (b/c naming an enemy that was preparing to join the WTO in December and cement its capitalist intentions hardly merits unlimited defense spending and hi-tech weapons development), the new report was rewritten in weeks to respond to an entirely new situation, and enemy. “In the decades ahead, we will face other threats that seem just as unimaginable to us today,” he wrote shortly thereafter. This new ambiguous enemy served several purposes. It saved Rummie and the Pentagon from embarrasment and compromise. It could unite Congress and the public into backing immense military funding and new product development. It justified the need for maintaining and expanding overseas bases. And, looking at the Reuters article yesterday, it looks like it helped increase Rummies portfolio.
Has anyone pursued this story in-depth? ‘Twould be a shame to see it keep getting swept under the newspaper at the bottom of the cage.

Posted by: b real | Sep 24 2004 16:31 utc | 25